


a corner of the sky

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Absurd amounts of pining, Birthdays, Dancing, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Injury, Really fluffy, Some angst, Spoilers, Tumblr Prompts, Violence, christmas but it’s not really about Christmas, prompt collection, tags will be continually updated, this is shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:32:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 12,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: collection of moments from the nine-nine. will be continually updated. taking prompts!





	1. windows

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! I’m gonna stick all my prompts here from now on! enjoy this fluffy, unseasonal mess. the prompt from anon was “Jake and Amy on Christmas morning”.

Jake doesn’t really like Christmas. 

Sure, he likes the concept behind it: family and gifts and goodwill towards everyone, because all that’s great. But Christmas never delivers, just leaves you with an empty, uneasy feeling in your stomach because there should be something more, something better. 

There’s also the awkward religious undertones that he’s admittedly also not a huge fan of, but that’s minor. 

The first Christmas he remembers, he was seven, almost eight. It was the first one without his dad there to mess up dinner (in a fun, lovable way, as younger Jake viewed it) or give him absurd amounts of presents or wake him up early in the morning so they can get to the presents all the sooner. 

His mom was working 6 in the morning to 6 at night, which was to be expected. Even then, he knew that; they needed the money and if she put in enough hours, she might even get a promotion and maybe not have to work as much. It didn’t make Jake feel any better, waking up home alone with snow falling silently outside his window. He waited until night for his mother to get home, and by then she was too tired to do anything with him; she just collapsed into bed and tiredly told him to make dinner for himself. He didn’t blame her, really he didn’t. 

As Jake put it to Gina the next day: “It’s not her fault, it just _sucks.”_

It’s not like Christmas was some awful, traumatizing thing for him, but it also wasn’t magical. Just mediocre. 

It takes thirty years for that to change.

____________________

Jake wakes up slow.

The yellow-gray morning light siphons in through their curtains, casting a soft, dim light across the bedsheets and pillows. Inside, it is warm; outside, it is cold. Slowly, he registers the warmth of Amy Santiago curled around him, arms slung around his neck and head buried in his chest, and he smiles softly. 

She stirs, as if somehow knowing he’d awakened. “Hey,” she whispers hoarsely, blinking drowsily up at him. “Not like you to be up before me.” Jake grins and kisses her forehead lightly. 

“Finally beat you at your own game.” 

Amy chuckles and leans her forehead against his shoulder. “Drink it in, Peralta. I know it doesn’t happen much.” 

Jake can’t even bring himself to gasp in fake offense, the way he usually would, just laughs quietly and pulls her closer. She smiles against his skin and leans up to kiss him, languid and slow, lips dry from sleep. They pull apart reluctantly, and Amy nuzzles her head into the junction of his neck and his shoulder. 

“Go back to sleep, Jake,” Amy murmurs, eyes fluttering shut. “I’m tired.” 

He hums softly against her hair. “I gotta make breakfast, Ames. I’m hungry.” 

She sighs and pulls away from him slowly, propping herself up on one elbow, looking tousled and almost comically forlorn. “Fine. But it better be pancakes, and they better be good.” Jake swings his legs out of bed, shaking his head slowly. 

“Can’t believe you’d doubt me. Can I annul my relationship?” 

Amy snorts, rubbing at her eyes with one hand. “First of all, nice word. Second of all, no.” Her lips quirk up into a smirk. “You’re stuck with me.” 

Jake rolls his eyes affectionately as he wanders out into the kitchen and gets to work on some pancakes, losing himself in the familiar, repetitive motions and the grainy light filtering in through the windows that gives the whole room an almost dreamlike sense. Distantly, he can hear Amy moving around the bedroom and padding into the kitchen, bare feet audible on the wooden floor. He turns his head to look at her, and, almost two years into the relationship, is still stunned when he looks at her. Hair messy from sleep, wearing one of his flannels that she’d stolen only weeks into their relationship and some sweatpants, early morning light hitting her tired face, she’s so beautiful that his lungs stop working for a second and the only thought in his mind is _I love you,_ as cheesy as it irrefutably is. 

“Mornin’,” Jake says, and he can’t help the slow smile spreading across his face. 

She meanders over to him, lazily brushing the hair out of her eyes, and rises up onto her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his shoulders from behind. 

He can feel her breath on his ear as she whispers, “Merry Christmas,” and kisses the corner of his jaw. 

Idly, unbelievably, Jake thinks he doesn’t hate Christmas as much as he used to.


	2. to make mistakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is actually a tumblr anon prompt from a while back asking for a oneshot in which jake is worried he’s going to screw the relationship up and Amy comforts him. it’s old-ish, but enjoy anyway!

The day is long.

That’s nothing new, maybe, and definitely not when you have the jobs Jake and Amy do, but that doesn’t make it suck too much less.

She had the 6 AM shift that morning, crawled out of bed at five (out of Jake’s arms wrapped snugly around her, breath soft in her hair, out of warm covers draped over the both of them) and into thin, watery dawn sunlight. She spent the whole day outside the precinct hunting down an elusive thief tied to a string of B&Es in their jurisdiction, only for the perp to get away. By the time she made it back to her desk, Jake had already finished his shift and gone back home.

Okay, Amy’s got nothing against being at the precinct for over twelve hours– this isn’t the first time, and certainly not the last, either– but she wants literally one thing right now, and that’s to go home, eat takeout, and kick her boyfriend’s ass at Scrabble or get beaten at one of those dumb luck-based board games that he’s so good at. So she sits at her desk and tries to figure out where the thief might have gone after almost getting arrested. Around her, she’s dimly aware of everyone leaving (it’s well past 8 PM by now, goddamnit Amy, just go home) But, she reminds herself, There’s no way I’m walking out of the precinct before I figure this out, even if God personally came down and told me to get out–

“Detective Santiago,” Holt calls out to her from across the bullpen, his coat folded neatly over his arm. “Your shift’s over, and it’s been a long day. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes sir!” she responds, fumbling to get out of her desk and stand ramrod straight. “You got it! I’ll be right out, just after I–”

His brow furrows imperceptibly. “Santiago.”

Amy slumps. “Yes, sir.” She grabs her bag, reorganizes her desk, and waits until she’s absolutely sure Captain Holt has actually left the precinct.

As an afterthought, she glances down at her phone.

_5 new texts from Jake Peralta_

_JP: hey are you coming home tonight?_

_JP: ????_

_JP: amy santiagoooooooooooo_

_JP: you can’t be late for work but you can be late for me?? rude_

_JP: babe i’m kidding dont b mad_

_JP: just come home i missed you today :,(_

Amy smiles down at the glowing screen, momentarily forgetting the dull buzz of the precinct around her.

_AS: I’m on my way, see you soon :)_

She pauses for a moment.

_AS: I missed you too._

_______________________________

Jake fidgets in front of the door. Normally, he wouldn’t be so nervous; it’s just his girlfriend coming home from work, so he has absolutely no reason to be this anxious about the whole thing. But it’s her birthday, and he’s ninety percent sure she’s either forgotten or doesn’t want to celebrate and never told him, and this time last year he was in Coral fucking Palms, and he just wants it to be… good.

So, yes, he’s been standing in front of this door since he got her text over a half hour ago.

He wipes his palms on his pants and unconsciously taps on the solid wood of the door. Jake doesn’t scare easily, it’s not a part of who he is. It’s a core component of his identity, as is, coincidentally, not getting too attached too quickly. Right now, both of those boxes are checked.

“Jake?” comes a muffled voice from the other side of the door, and he stifles a startled yelp.

“I’m here!” he yells in response, and fumbles to unlock the door and let Amy in, and then she’s standing in front of him and he’s momentarily stunned. They’ve been dating for a little over two years now and he’s still absolutely blown away by the glint of the candles he’d set up in the spur of the moment hitting her eyes, still blown away by the perplexed smile on her face, still blown away by the soft teasing of her voice.

“What’s all this?” she asks, laughing a little as she gestures around to the general atmosphere. Dimly, Jake registers the candles flickering at the edges of the room, the heaping plates of food piled on their kitchen island, and the slightly nicer flannel he’d picked out even though it’s a little tight around his arms.

Suddenly remembering the Plan (yes, capital-P-Plan, okay? He didn’t make a binder because he didn’t have the time but he did make a portfolio, so _there)._ “Okay, listen, I know I was in Coral Palms last year so I’m counting this as our first one since we got together, so I made you dinner and I got you some stuff and wow, I really hope you like this because maybe you didn’t want anything like this–”

About halfway through, Amy starts laughing a little, and he registers the confused amusement midsentence. “What?” he asks, pre-emptively turning red.

“Jake,” Amy says through her laughter, “what are you talking about?”

“Well– it’s your birthday, and I wanted to celebrate. I didn’t wanna screw it up.” Unnecessarily, Jake gestures around at the whole scene of their apartment: meticulously reorganized, dinner ready (although cooling), candles he’d bought from the bodega down the street, soft music playing in the background (for once not rap or Taylor Swift).

“Hang on, what? You think today’s my birthday?”

“Yeah! Absolutely!” 

Amy stares at him blankly. 

“Oh, shit.”

Amy laughs, without malice, and Jake wants to sink into the ground. “Jake, no, this is great, I can’t believe you did all this for me– just, my birthday isn’t for three days.” 

He wanders over to the couch and flops down, hands over his face. “Oh my God, this is my worst nightmare.” The tone is on that certain edge of joking and clearly serious that makes Amy deeply worried (on one end, she’s glad she can at least recognize it now; on the other, it hurts to see him like this).

A hand settles slowly on his shoulder, at the junction where his neck meets his collarbone. “Jake. You didn’t screw anything up. I love this. I love you. It’s okay.”

Muffled against his hand: “This is exactly the kind of shit I’d hate my dad for screwing up.”

“What?”

Hand hesitantly moving away: “My dad would do this kind of thing. Screw up something really important. But, like, he tried, right? So I’d be nice to him, tell him it was okay. But it sucked a lot.” A weak laugh. “Whatever. Daddy issues.”

Amy’s pretty sure that was supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t feel funny. Not at all.

“Jake, you’re fine. I love you so much, and this is honestly the sweetest.” She presses her lips briefly against the corner of his mouth for emphasis. “If you wanna talk about it, it’s okay. If you don’t, that’s okay too.”

Jake lets out a soft murmur of contentment as she punctures her statement with another soft kiss. “Nah. It’s okay.” A soft moment of prolonged eye contact, equal parts awkward and real. Then: “Damn, now I’m all out of surprises for your actual birthday.”

Amy smiles at him. “Let’s just eat dinner and play Scrabble.”

“You’re gonna beat me, though,” he whines, and she laughs at that. “Can we at least play Yahtzee after?”

She smiles again. “Yes.”

Somehow, she beats him at both. It’s pretty much par for the course, as far as Jake is concerned.

_______________________________

Laying in bed, later, she pulls him close, and maybe it’s the solid, comforting weight of her body against his, maybe it’s the glow of New York City soft through the window, maybe it’s the warmth of sheets, but Jake whispers, “I just don’t want to screw this up.”

She pulls back just far enough for him to see her face and watches him for a long moment, hand pressed against his chest. “I know you won’t.”

That night, for the first time in a while, Jake sleeps well.


	3. your heart on the line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoilers for show me going. prompt from farmlesbian on tumblr: "angsty prompt for u (that u by no means have to do ur welcome to throw it out there for other writers to do): holt doesn’t stop jake in time and he ends up getting injured (could be serious or something small up to u) going after rosa. commence scared/upset moments between him n amy." ask and u shall receive

The car screeches away from the curb, and Jake doesn’t look back at the precinct through the rearview window. It doesn’t feel real anymore– nothing in this day has felt tangible since “Diaz, 3118, show me going”– and he can’t think about it, doesn’t want to think about it, just presses his foot harder down on the gas pedal and speeds through a yellow light to a storm of honks from surrounding cars.

Jake thinks about Holt’s face as he got into the car and feels a sharp pang in his gut. There’s something inside him that is saying _this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong,_ but he shoves it down and only drives faster, fixes his eyes on the road so he doesn’t have to fix his mind.

It doesn’t take him too long to reach the cordon. “Sir, you can’t be here,” a uniformed officer tells him as he leaps out of his car and slams the door behind him. Jake says nothing, just flashes his badge at him and hurries past. “Sir–” the officer calls after him, and he can feel rage welling up inside him from some unknown source. “Sir, you have to leave.”

He whips around. “My name is Jacob Peralta. I’m here to aid an officer from my precinct. This is my job. Don’t keep me from doing it.”

The officer looks like he might say something else, but Jake rushes off again, feet slamming against asphalt. In the distance, he can hear gunshots. He runs faster.

Every time he sees someone from the NYPD he breathlessly asks “Have you seen Diaz, 3118? Do you know where–” only to get a shake of a head and a confused tightening of the eyebrows that he can’t quite register, because the only thing he can see is vision after vision of Rosa, bleeding out on the front steps of a building; Rosa, getting hit with bullet after bullet; Rosa, crumpling to the ground; Rosa, overpowered in a fistfight with the perp; Rosa, alone, with no one to help or save her. _Rosa Diaz is a badass,_ Jake reminds himself, and she can and will survive anything. Because Rosa Diaz does not die, not with Jake around, and certainly not here; there’s no way Rosa Diaz can die, ever. But the only thing he can hear is gunfire. He keeps running.

“Jake? Jake–”

He spins around, panting, and then someone is grabbing his arm and dragging him to a stop. He can’t breathe anymore, and he wonders why.

“Jake, what the fuck are you doing here? You’re supposed to be back at the precinct.”

Rosa. Rosa, hair tousled as always; Rosa, a wild, intense look in dark eyes that aren't quite focused on him; Rosa, standing solidly in front of him, boots firmly planted on the pavement; Rosa, with her fingers resting on her gun; Rosa, alive.

“I’m here to help,” Jake whispers, because he can’t speak anymore, and even those four words ache in his throat.

Rosa is scanning the streets around her, and, distantly, Jake wonders why he can’t breathe. He wonders why he’s even here, when he was sure Diaz would be okay, when he knew she had support, when he knew it would be easier to keep himself.

“I mean, why? You knew people would be here, Jake. You’re not an idiot.” A pause. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

A choked-off laugh from Jake. “God, Rosa, if anyone gets to die in an awesome Die Hard-y firefight, it’s gonna be me and it’s pretty inconsiderate of you to assume you’d get to.”

She gives him a stern look, because obviously, obviously she knows he’s lying, but whatever she’s going to say gets cut off by more gunfire.

“Peralta, the shooters are getting closer. I was stationed to be part of a border a quarter mile out from the center of the violence, one or two officers per intersection. If you’re going to stay, you’d better be prepared for it.”

He nods and pulls his gun from his holster, and then there’s one of them, down at the end of the block, running closer. _It’s just some guy in a mask,_ Jake registers, as if from far away, and he almost laughs– is this who he thought might end Rosa’s life? The whole affair feels absurd, and just like that, the choked feeling disappears from his throat and he advances side by side with Rosa, long sure steps and loaded guns stretched out in front of them.

And then, gunshots again. This time so much closer. This time, a sharp stab of pain in his gut, and then another, this time off the side of his ribcage, and his knees are on the ground, suddenly, and his hands are on the dusty gravel of the sidewalk. Dimly, he’s aware that shock must be setting in, because everything feels blurred at the edges and his whole torso feels numb. It’s only distantly that he can see the shooter veering off and sprinting away down the nearest alley.

“Rosa–” Jake gasps out, and tries to focus on staying on his hands and knees, because if he’s forced flat on the ground by pain and instability then that makes this whole thing real, deadly.

“Jake,” she says, and her voice is shaking as she kneels down beside him and places her hand on his chest and shoulder to steady him. “I’ve radioed in. They’re sending an ambulance.”

“It’s okay,” he replies, but now his voice is shaking too and the pain of it all is making everything feel dark and just out of reach and fuzzy.

“Why are you here, you idiot?” Rosa asks again, but there’s urgency now in her voice and an acute kind of pain, too.

He squeezes his eyes shut. “Didn’t want you t’ get hurt. Worried. Didn’t care what happened to me.” A laugh grates its way out of his throat. “Impulsive. Holt told me not to–” Jake’s abdomen spasms and he groans, clutching at the wound. “Not as young as I used to be. Would’ve— would’ve walked this kind of shit off in the Academy.”

“Dude, shut up–” Rosa tells him, or maybe yells. “Stop trying to talk. This isn’t– Just stay awake. Just don’t–”

Jake opens his eyes again, his lungs clenching. “Didn’t think I’d wanna– grow old. Thought I wanted to die young. Go out in a blaze of glory while I was still pretty– but.” He tries to inhale. “Amy. I can’t—”

Panic swells in his chest, because now he’s crumpled down onto the sidewalk, and he wishes he knew if there was a way back from this. He thinks his heart might fall out of his chest.

“Amy,” he rasps. “I wanna get old with her. I wanna– God, I don’t wanna die, Rosa, please don’t let me die.”

“I won’t,” she whispers, and maybe he’s imagining it, but there are tears in her eyes.

And then, nothing.

_________________

The first thing he feels when he wakes up is a dim kind of surprise.

“Wow,” is the first thing he says. “I’m still alive.”

“Yeah,” someone says to his left; a little choked, a lot scared. “You are.”

Jake’s eyes flutter open and, slowly, he turns his head. “Ames?”

“Hi,” she whispers, and shifts closer to him, and he registers that her hands are clenched almost painfully tightly around his. There’s something in his chest, something light and swelling and happy, and there’s a soft smile making his way across his face now that he can’t help.

She chokes out a laugh and presses their joined hands against her forehead. “I was so scared,” Amy breathes, almost inaudibly, so that Jake has to strain to hear. “Why did you– why the hell did you go out there?”

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, and even with the pain in every line of her face, he can’t tear his eyes away from Amy Santiago. “I was scared, too.”

She looks back up at him, and anger burns in her dark eyes. “You don’t get to die, Jake. You don’t get to fucking die. It’s not–” Amy stops, throat tight. “Rosa called me. She was scared too. Do you know what would happen if you _died?”_

“No,” he admits, and he wants to hold her, wishes he could protect her from his own impulsivity, his own fear. “But I won’t.”

Amy laughs again, but it’s more of an exhausted sob than anything else. “You can’t know that, Jake. That’s not how it works.”

“Ames,” Jake murmurs, “Look at me.” She does, eyes shining with unshed tears. “I won’t leave. I want to grow old with you. I want to marry you. I want to live exactly as long as you do.”

Amy exhales and throws her arms around him, burying her head in his neck. Dull pain shoots down his side, but he can’t bring himself to care, just wraps his arms around her, too.

“You can’t do this again,” she says, muffled against his skin. “Ever.”

“I won’t.” Pause. “I love you.”

Amy pulls back and presses a gentle kiss against his lips. Tears are on both of their faces, but, for once, Jake doesn’t feel like hiding it.

“I love you too,” Amy whispers.


	4. cold days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little drabble based on a tumblr prompt thing-- "enamor me" (one character tries to woo the other)

Amy Santiago’s first Valentine’s Day at the ninety-ninth precinct was disappointing, to say the least.

(She spends the night ranting to Kelly over the phone about trashy men and the absolute lack of love in this world, about her jackass desk partner who wouldn’t stop teasing her all day about her sex life, about her idiotic, vaguely creepy captain. The whole thing, simply put, sucks.)

The second and third pretty much hold the pattern, and if there’s one thing Amy knows how to recognize, it’s a pattern. 

The fourth is, in ways that are both obvious and subtle, very different.

__________________________

Jake wakes up the morning of February 14th and expects more of the same.

Nothing has, essentially, changed. It’s the new year, but nothing feels new. Sure, Amy is dating some guy whose name he pretends to keep forgetting (it’s Teddy Wells, he knows that, but he wishes he didn’t), and sure, it’s depressing, but whatever. He’s steadfastly alone and single and almost okay with it, because goodness knows he carries a torch for his coworker (he wishes he could forget _that_ little nugget of information, too), who sits across from him and bickers and puts him in his place and grouches at him for his handwriting, but smirks at him when he makes a dumb joke and shines when she laughs and jokes with him and will talk to him when the rest of the precinct ignores him. 

He rolls out of bed and sighs, ruffling already sleep-rumpled hair. It’s a chilly day, but there’s no snow to speak of. Just frosty and cold and wind blustering across Brooklyn. _Amy’ll freeze to death on the way to work,_ Jake thinks, because he knows she's always cold, and then laughs to himself at the image of her taking the bus and shivering in the back, wrapped in the black peacoat and woolen red scarf she always wears when it’s icy like today, but she won’t stop for coffee because she doesn’t have the time and is trying to cut back on unnecessary spendings. Some part of him recognizes these are not normal things you know about your coworkers, but he can’t bring himself to care. It doesn’t matter, he’s pretty sure, because Amy Santiago is his friend and he’s known her for four years so who’s to say that he shouldn’t know about her spending habits and her life calendar and how she does (or rather, doesn’t) take her coffee. 

So Jake forgets it. 

He pulls on a rumpled old flannel, shrugs on a leather jacket, belligerently stuffs a tie in his pocket (he’ll put it on in the elevator up to the bullpen). Stumbles tiredly out the door, down the stairs, and to his beat-up, falling-apart car. 

And he forgets it. 

And then he sees a coffee shop, a new one, and without thinking parks by the side of the road, orders a coffee (just the way she likes it, doesn’t even get one for himself), takes it, and drives away. 

Jake tries not to wonder why he does that. 

(His actions have been that way a lot lately. He doesn’t wonder why he wraps Amy up in more hugs lately, doesn’t wonder why his eyes stray to every little bit of skin exposed by her pantsuit, doesn’t wonder why he looks at her more often than he used to, doesn’t wonder why he thinks about her late at night, doesn’t wonder about his sudden obsession with making her laugh. It’s easier to keep denying what he knows down to each individual atom.) 

He breezes into the precinct three minutes late, and, as expected, Amy berates him for it with a tiny hidden smile curling her lips upward, which Jake returns in the form of a wide grin and setting the coffee down on her desk like he’s just played the winning move in chess. 

“Boom,” Jake says. “Coffee.” 

Her nose scrunches up in a small, amused way that Jake finds decidedly adorable. “What’s this for?” 

It’s then that the innate weirdness of the situation hits Jake, and he shrugs, a little awkwardly. “Dunno. Just figured you’d be cold.” 

Amy laughs softly and shakes her head, staring down at red mittens that match her red scarf. “Yeah. You were right. But, Jake, you know you didn’t have to do this.” A blush is rising high on her cheeks, and she doesn’t really know if it’s from the stinging wind outside or something distinctly other. 

“Sure I did.” He beams at her, and it’s only a little hesitant. “It’s Valentine’s Day.” 

She smiles back, and warmth swells in his chest. 

(Later Jake googles “how to make a girl like you back even though she’s dating another guy and she’s way prettier than you and makes you feel like you’re going to explode”. It’s not helpful. But he keeps buying Amy coffee on cold days, and she keeps accepting it, and something, now, is very different than it was before.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u enjoyed! feel free to give prompts!


	5. ring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a sad prompt that i decided to uhhh.... extrapolate on and not follow at all
> 
> set at the beginning of season 5

There’s a heart-wrenching sort of element to all of it. 

The flashing lights of a beloved city through her blinds that mask the natural moonlight that might’ve once made it way into her room in serene bars. The soft smile on her face as she looks at her grandmother’s ring, sparking in a multicolored, fluctuating glow. There are too many truths in the silver of a simple metal band, truths that she doesn’t understand yet but she is trying, she is trying. These are truths learned through an entire lifetime that she cannot yet grasp. 

(Far away, in a tiny, cramped cell, Jake’s fingers are curled around the photo he keeps always in his pocket, folded up into eighths. Looking at it. Wishing.) 

Amy Santiago cannot fall asleep. 

She’s tried writing poetry before, but the words don’t feel right in her fingers or traced across her lips. The grooves her pens make in the paper don’t capture the scope of it right, and it frustrates her; it frustrates her that she can’t find the right shapes or sounds or syllables to perfectly hold her feelings, bundle them up into a neat, miserable, fathomable package, but mostly it just saddens her more than anything else.

She runs idle fingers over cold metal, warmed just a little to her touch, and closes her eyes. 

Jacob Peralta has left a mark on her. And it’s terrifying, the idea that he might never get to do it again. 

His lips, brushing across her cheek. His calloused but somehow still gentle fingers tracing her lips. 

She exhales and opens her eyes. 

It’s lonely, and the loneliness manifests in an ache in her heart. 

(There hasn’t been a single good night of sleep for Amy in months. When he first went to prison, she didn’t fall asleep for days on end, finally collapsing from exhaustion in the middle of the precinct.) 

Nothing feels _right_ anymore. 

The essence of her life feels like it’s been jilted out of her place, and too much of her heart has been anchored to Jake Peralta for too long, because the empty space next to her where he should be leaves a tangible pain in her chest. 

She’s tried writing poetry before, but the words don’t capture it. 

Love is not a word. Fear is not a word. Loneliness is not a word. 

(She wants to believe she’s learned through the course of her life that definitions don’t always need to apply, that things are not always so simple, that words mean so much more than denoted in the dictionary.)

The ring is frigid in her hands. 

Idly, Amy reminds herself to turn up the heat. 

The apartment is cold, these days.


	6. by your light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little prompt about one character healing the other! set early relationship. real quick drabble i banged out after a four hour exam

Jake makes a whiny noise of disapproval as Amy dabs at his split lip with disinfectant. 

She rolls her eyes and scoots closer to him, grabbing his jaw none too gently to get a better angle. “C’mon, Jake; the guy had a reputation for punching police who try to detain him. I don’t really know what you expected.”

“I’m too cool for that, Santiago! When I said I wanted a badass cop battle scar, I meant, I don’t know, a gunshot wound to the abdomen! Or a stab in the arm!” 

Amy doesn’t dignify that with a reply, just presses the disinfectant-soaked cotton ball harder against his wound until he yelps and shuts up. 

They’re sitting in the cramped backseat of his car (with the First-Aid kit from her car; she doesn’t want any blood on _her_ seats) and she has to twist around all weirdly to be able to treat his wound. 

“I still don’t get why you couldn’t do this yourself, Peralta.” 

He chuckles a little at that, and then winces when his cut starts bleeding again from the movement. “It’s cute when you get fake annoyed at me. And anyways, I know you can’t bear to see this–” Jake gestures to his face and general physique “– harmed in any way without doing anything about it.” 

“Childish jackass,” Amy mutters, but her lips are tugging upwards. 

“Tightly-wound prude,” Jake returns with a laugh. “Plus, you’re the one dating me.” 

She looks at him– ruffled hair, wide grin, and earnest eyes, backlit by the sun going down outside his grimy car window– and can’t help the warmth expanding throughout her chest or the slow smile spreading across her face. 

“Yeah,” Amy says, “guess I’m stuck with you now.” Jake pulls a face of exaggerated offense and gasps loudly, but she cuts him off with a long, soft kiss, one hand slowly going up to rest against his jawline, the other against his cheek. 

When she pulls back, there’s a look of quiet wonder in his eyes. “Yeah,” he murmurs, a smile curled up on his lips like a secret. “Guess so.”


	7. coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick little drabble in a series of one word prompts, this one being “coffee”

Their first actual date (like, in the light of day, not trying to sneak around their coworkers), they decide to be cliche and go to a cafe, figuring that, sure, why not embrace the fact that they’re one massive trope? 

It’s way earlier than Jake would normally wake up on a day off (8:30 exactly so he could be there by 9:00), but to his surprise, he enjoys the morning air and buzz of Brooklyn around him. 

He gets there precisely three minutes and twenty seconds before Amy, who apologizes way too much for her tardiness, despite her being there five minutes before the agreed-upon time, as always. 

(They’d planned it this early in the morning so they wouldn’t have drinking to hide behind, because if they could only get through a date under the influence of alcohol it would probably be best to figure it out now.) 

There’s still that familiar awkwardness, but this time it dissipates within five minutes because Jake accidentally brings up the Worst Case of His Life and Amy ruthlessly interrogates him about every excruciating detail (which included but was not limited to: being covered in gouda cheese, striking out with a girl known to have the lowest standards in the entire NYPD, losing the perp multiple times, and then Hitchcock solving it for him in five seconds without even meaning to). 

By the time the waiter comes, a tired-looking teenager who looks like he hates his job, Amy can’t breathe from laughing too hard and Jake is almost cartoonishly red in the face. 

“What do you want?” the kid says gloomily. 

“Black coffee and a croissant,” Amy replies, words punctuated with laughter as she gathers herself, and before Jake can say anything about his order, Amy grins at the kid and says, “also, a powdered donut and absurdly sweet mocha for him,” and even though it’s supposed to be a jab at his sweet tooth, he grins and ducks his head shyly. 

The teenager slumps away, and Jake almost starts laughing again at the sheer exhausted defeat on his face before he turns his attention back to his date (his _date!_ He’s unreasonably hyped about the whole thing). 

“Aw, Ames, you know me so well.” 

She laughs and, idly, reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. “Yeah, it’s blessing and a curse, _Pineapples.”_

He rolls his eyes, but he’s already intertwining their fingers and shooting her a sly grin. “Lucky for me, it’s not a one way street.”


	8. bang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another quick one word anon prompt: “bang”

“Oh my God, you really do have Die Hard memorized down to the line,” Amy says, and Jake likes to think he hears a hint of admiration in the disgusted amusement. 

Jake laughs and pulls her closer, curled together on their lumpy, uncomfortable couch (though goodness knows he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else). “Yeah, and you tease me about my goldfish brain.” 

Amy wriggles around to face him, nose to nose. “Because it’s true. I mean, you didn’t even know what month it was half the time till you moved in with me and calendars were everywhere, and sometimes you still forget.” 

His eyes gleam with amusement in the bright light of the television, stark against the shadowy living room. “Maybe so. But I still solved more cases than you back in, like, 2013, so who’s the real winner here?” 

“That was 2014, Jake, and it was absolutely a fluke,” Amy huffs, but it’s hard to stay annoyed at someone when your noses are touching and you’re going cross-eyed in your attempt to glare at them. 

Chapped, soft lips press briefly against hers, and she can feel the shape of his smirk against her mouth. “Keep telling yourself that, babe.” 

Instead of bothering to respond, she kisses him, hard, winding her fingers up into his hair and tugging until he sucks in a short breath as she shoves him back further against the couch. 

When she pulls away, he stares at her for a long moment, a half-grin curling up his lips, eyes wide.

Getting Peralta to shut up has become significantly easier in recent years. 

Amy props herself up on an elbow, face to face with Jake, and gives him a winning smile. “I know the crime stats for the last four years, Jacob. I’m absolutely the better detective.” 

“Nah. You’re just the better sergeant. Nay, the _best_ sergeant,” he concedes, smiling crookedly, and Amy grins. 

“Damn right I am.” 

Satisfied, she lets him pull her back against his chest, his nose nuzzled up into her scalp. 

“Bang, bang,” Jake whispers in perfect time to the gunshots onscreen, and instead of bickering, Amy just laughs and cranes her neck around to kiss him again.


	9. stand and deliver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this time the prompt was amy suddenly noticing how attractive jake was let’s GO

The sharp, cheerful sound of glasses clinking together blend with the chaotic yet somehow comforting buzz of the bar around them. 

It’s been a long week (most are), but instead of going home like she so desperately wishes she could, Amy is crammed into a single booth with the rest of the Ninety-Ninth precinct late on a Friday night getting progressively drunker. 

“Peraaaaaaalta,” she drawls at Jake, who she’s leaned up against, because fuck it, personal space is a lie in this job anyway, and he exaggeratedly raises an eyebrow at her. 

“What’s up, Santiago?” Jake asks, grinning and taking a sip of his beer.

Amy laughs, then, for no particular reason and shoves her shoulder against his. “Nothing– you’ve just got a fun name.” 

He smiles widely at her– not his normal smile. This one crinkles up the corners of his eyes more than normal, and almost seems to glow from the inside out from the golden light of the bar. “Awwww, Santiago. Didn’t know you felt that way about me. You’ve got a fun name too.” There’s a laugh waiting on the tip of Jake’s tongue that Amy can sense hovering in the air. His eyes are shining and his hair is tousled from how much he rakes his fingers through it when he’s thinking (Amy doesn’t think he notices it, and she’s right). 

“Your hair is always so messed up, Jake,” she says, and without her brain’s permission, she idly reaches up to wind her fingers through it (Jake is blushing now, but she’s too focused on the soft curls in her hand to notice). 

Gently, he reaches up to lightly grab her wrist, a soft, delighted chuckle escaping his lips. Instead of moving it away, though, Jake simply holds it there, thumb brushing against the bone of her wrist, and, just for a moment, he wonders. 

Amy looks back at him, smile still not entirely faded from her lips. And she notices what she’s been trying to ignore since the first awkward handshake four years ago: the tiny upturn of soft lips, the shimmer in alcohol-bright hazel eyes, the ruffled hair, the flannel rolled up just above his elbows to expose strong arms, the tiny, pale freckles dusting his skin; not blemishes, just the marks of living. 

She almost, almost, brushes her lips across them (she can feel his breath ghosting over her skin, and something in her clenches in a good way). 

Instead, she pulls back and laughs it off, steals a swig from his beer, makes him laugh again. 

It’s a fluke. A trick of the light. The fantasy of a slightly drunken, tired mind.

It has to be. 

Amy comes back to work the next day to find him perched on her desk, kicking his feet, flannel rolled up just above his elbows. He grins at her. 

(It’s not a fluke.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thabk u guys so much for your support here and on tumblr (I’m @fishycorvid, hit me up), and as always I’m open for prompts!!


	10. thread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a fun little post-wedding piece. disgustingly, abhorrently mushy.

Amy presses a kiss to Jake’s lips, soft and lingering, and it’s not the first (or last) time she’s done that tonight, leaning up against the counter of the crowded bar.

“You have approximately 24 hours before this stops being sweet and starts just being gross,” Rosa informs them, nose already wrinkled.

Next to her, Gina huffs and rolls her eyes. “Don’t take her word for it. I’m already disgusted.” But there’s a quiet little smile that nobody is accustomed to seeing on the face of Gina Linetti as she sits perched on her barstool, drink in hand.

Charles sighs dreamily, uncomfortably close to Jake. “Trust me, Jakey, I’d be happy if you went on forever.”

(Cue the collective groans of disgust from the group, Holt included.)

After a while, it’s just Jake and Amy, like usual— Rosa had been the first to leave (usual), this time with a glint in her eyes (unusual); Charles had reluctantly rushed home to Nikolaj a few minutes later; Holt departed to take care of his deeply sick corgi; Gina looked around the now-mostly-empty bar, said goodbye in a characteristically dramatic fashion, and sashayed out the door into the night (then took a cab once she made sure she was out of eyesight, just to suspend the mystery).

They stand opposite each other yet pressed together in every physically possibly way, leaned up against each other.

“So,” Jake says, and Amy just laughs delightedly and buries her head in the rumpled collar of his tuxedo. “We got married.”

“Yeah,” she whispers against his neck, then rises up into tiptoes to lightly brush her lips against his cheek. “We did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the peraltiago wedding Killed Me Dead, and so this happened. anyways leave a comment or kudos or prompt!!! thx for reading!!


	11. book

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little bit of fluff, just for fun

Since it’s the twenty-first century, and she works long hours day and night, Amy doesn’t really have time for full-on scrapbooks, though that was her main fantasy as a kid— having enough memories and photos and friends and time and office supplies to make a scrapbook. But she does have a photobook: a little collection of pictures taken by everyone over the last several years since she started at the Nine-Nine. Sometimes it serves as evidence (“Look! In the background of this photo of the squad from about two weeks, looking at you really suspiciously! I bet you he’s the guy who tried to murder you, Jake!” “That’s dumb as hell, Santiago— oh my God you’re right, I’m never gonna live this down—“), but mostly it’s just… nice to have around. Sometimes, she opens it to a random page and skims through, barely looking; a snapshot of her first briefing she’d gotten off a security feed; her and Jake at Shaw’s bar arguing, taken by Gina; a picture of Holt cut out of the newspaper. It’s not organized, by any means, and Amy certainly forgets about it sometimes, but every couple months, on bright, early Saturday mornings, she’ll pull it out of the third drawer of her night stand and search through her photo library, the official NYPD photos, the pictures sent to her over text. Without fail, she prints them off (creepy, vaguely stalker-y photos from Charles and all) and pastes them into the book with a very Santiago-y type of precision.

May 19th, 2018, Jake rolls over in bed to see her thumbing through the pages, fingers lovingly smoothing down creases.

“Morning, wife,” he murmurs with a bleary grin, scooting closer and peering over her shoulder as he wraps an arm around her. Amy smiles down at him from where she’s perched on the side of the bed, leaning slightly to the side to kiss his forehead.

“Morning, husband,” she half-says, half-laughs back, a hand moving to idly card through cropped, short hair as she gazes down at these snapshots, shreds of lives they used to lead. The security cam record of his proposal. The warm light of Shaw’s bar, them in a booth in a corner, sleeping leaned up against each other, still in their best clothing.

Pages upon pages back: a photo of Jake grinning over his desk at her, curly bangs falling over his eyes, with her in the background, scowling in a way that is definitely hiding a smile.

This page, here, now: two hands, both adorned with rings, fingers intertwined in the light of day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! again I’ve got the same username on here as on tumblr if you wanna hmu


	12. memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the prompt word was "memory", so here's a bit of an extrapolation, and now it's a love letter to Amy loving Jake.

Because Amy is the most organized, deliberate, exact person she or anyone else knows, she’s been trying to pinpoint an exact moment where she fell in love with Jake for good, in a no-takebacks sort of way. 

The thing is, Amy has never fallen fast. There’s never any moment or action or memory that absolutely defines their relationship in a cut and dry way. She wishes she could say it was the first time they kissed, or the first time she said “I love you,” or when he purposefully lost a bet just to move in with her. But it wasn’t like that. She can’t point to anything and say _that’s it, that’s the moment that changed the course of my entire goddamn life._ When she was a kid, she used to want that, that orderliness, that certainty, that perfect little soundbite summarizing the whole topic in a sentence that could be packaged away for safekeeping. 

Ironically, Amy thinks, it was Jake who made her not care so much about that. 

Once, in 2012, he smiled over his computer screen at her. It was 11:39 PM. They’d been working a cold case for around twenty-four hours, and were no closer to solving it than when they started. She’d put her head in her hands, massaging her temples, staring through tired, blurry eyes at the file in front of her. But when Amy looked up, Jake was smiling at her. “We’ll solve this one,” he said. “We always do.” 

And they did. 

They weren’t friends then, not really, but they didn’t have to be: they trusted each other implicitly and explicitly, in a way so damningly simple and necessary to survival that Amy couldn’t even define it. 

Then there was that bet she lost in the last sixty seconds, him dancing towards her with a one-dollar ring and a shit-eating grin on his face, spinning and falling on one knee. And, sure, Amy might have hated her life in that moment, but it was worth it for the stakeout and riding in his crappy, broken-down car, and feeling, for once, like maybe it wasn’t even a little bit malicious. 

There was the time Jake stayed up with her all night, coaxing her into eating and drinking and taking breaks, when her little nephew got kidnapped in their precinct, and, by some mistake of bureaucracy or Holt, she got saddled with a case she was far too involved in. 

There was the tiny, nervous smile on his face just before he kissed her for real the first time. No excuses. No criminals to avoid. No fear. No ways out. Just them, in a small, dimly lit locker full of horrific criminal evidence. 

There was his amazed, soft gaze on her when she told him she loved him. 

His arms, unconsciously pulling her closer in the middle of the night. 

His fingers, brushing feather-light over her skin. 

Jake. 

When Amy was younger, she was afraid she wouldn’t know how to define love when she saw it. 

Now, she can see it so easily in every line of his smile.


	13. unfamiliar melody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just.... unashamed fluff. it's not even a prompt i just talked about it with @fruitwhirl and then wrote it lol, so blame her instead of me. set during their engagement, on new year's eve
> 
> enjoy!!

They sprawl out, spread eagled, Jake on the rug of the living room, Amy collapsed on their couch, arm limply dangling off the edge. Around them, red Solo cup litter the floor, as does confetti, assorted bottles of alcohol, general trash, and a bunch of photos of Nikolaj that had fallen out of Charles’ wallet that he’d never fully gotten around to picking up. Music plays softly in the background, and Jake can’t really be sure, but he thinks it’s an acoustic cover of Orinoco Flow.

“Can’t we just wait till tomorrow to clean up?” he whines, blinking slowly up at his fiancee. 

She rolls over, hovering above him, and her hand brushes his chest as she leans down. “Jake, we already had this conversation. Tomorrow we’re just gonna be hungover, and you’ll convince me that we, quote, _deserve a day of rest,_ unquote, and you’ll _charm,_ me, because you’re _awful,_ and then it won’t get done until like midnight when I sit bolt upright in bed and start maniacally cleaning, and you’ll get all annoyed and weirded out.”

“Okay, one,” Jake replies, idly grabbing her hand and smoothing his thumb over her knuckles, back and forth, “we’ve already established that I find your pathological need to clean kind of weirdly adorable, and two, of course I’m going to charm you, it’s my entire _job.”_

__

__

Amy cracks a grin at that and closes her eyes, making a soft noise of approval at the sensation of his fingers sweeping across her hand. “Don’t let Holt catch you saying that.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, babe,” he murmurs, raising her fingers to his lips. She smiles down at him, and they stay there in the moment for a while, watching each other in a kind of peace that feels incredibly natural and somehow not at all weird. 

After a few moments, though, Amy jolts bolt upright and subsequently falls off the couch directly onto Jake, who lets out a soft oof and a markedly louder noise of protest. 

Amy, however, pays no mind to him, and squawks, _“Jake!_ We’re gonna have to dance at the wedding!” He squints up at her, chuckling a little at her frantic tone, and props himself up on an elbow. 

“Yeah, Ames, that’s generally how it goes,” he mutters bemusedly, but there’s a humorous grin on his face. 

She swats his shoulder. “I can’t dance, Jake!” 

He shrugs and smiles, hand finding its way back to hers. “Yeah, I know, it’s adorable. I kinda love it.” 

_“Jake.”_

“Okay, okay, I’ll be cute later and teach you now. Just a warning, though: I’m _always_ cute,” Jake winks at her, and she rolls her eyes but leans forward to kiss the tip of his nose regardless. 

Carefully, he rolls her off of his chest and pulls her up to her feet with him, tilting his head to listen to the music. “Well?” Amy prompts him, tapping on his wrist. 

Jake shrugs, turning his attention back to her. “It’s not a waltz, and that’s what I was going to teach you, because it’s really hard to mess that up. But it’s okay, we don’t need music.” 

“You sure about that?” 

“One hundred percent, babe. You can barely dance even _with_ music, so I doubt the lack of it will make much of a difference,” he teases, pausing the music playing quietly on his phone. She can’t even get mad at that; it’s a pretty valid point and at this point a painfully well-known fact that she can’t dance. Her parents tried to have her learn when she was younger, just basic ballroom stuff, but she could barely even manage that. 

“Alright, alright, whatever. Can’t believe I’m marrying you. What’s first?” Amy briefly toys with the idea of shoving him and calling the whole thing off, as she would’ve earlier in their relationship. But there’s a soft kind of mirth in his eyes that’s sort of making her melt, even as he playfully mocks her. 

Jake directs one hand to rest on his upper arm and holds the other one loosely, before pulling her closer and resting a hand on her waist. “Well, first, that,” he murmurs gently. “Now, I’m gonna take some steps, really slowly, and you’re gonna follow me.” He moves fluidly, forward and right and left and back, revolving slightly as he tugs her to follow him. “C’mon, Ames, you’re good with patterns. You’ll get this down too.” She expects there to be annoyance in his voice as she steps on his bare feet countless times, but there’s only affection as he repeats the steps, again and again, until she starts mirroring him well enough that he can speed up. 

Jake hums softly as he turns, and she knows enough about music to recognize it as a waltz. His eyes are closed, eyelashes fluttering against his lightly-freckled cheeks. Deftly, he maneuvers them around the trash scattering the floor, even as glitter sticks to their bare feet and the city rages outside their door. 

It’s comfortable, Amy realizes, dancing with him. It doesn’t make her self-conscious, even as she’s aware of her overall ineptitude. Jake opens his eyes and smiles at her, bringing up a hand to touch her cheekbone, lips curling softly, eyes shining. She stumbles over her next step and he laughs quietly and pulls her against his chest so they’re just swaying together on her– their– rug (which is, by the way, probably stained with alcohol). Simply quiet and comfortable and anything she could have asked for, head tucked into the junction of his neck and shoulder, slowly moving back and forth across the floor, bumping into the couch every so often, and Jake is humming into her scalp, an action that she feels more than hears. They’ve surrendered proper hand positioning to just wind their arms around each other, swaying side to side. 

As one, they stop, and Amy cranes her neck up to look at Jake’s face to find him already smiling down at her contentedly. 

“Happy New Year, Ames,” he murmurs, and kisses her chastely and sweetly. 

She hums his tune back against his mouth, and she can feel his lips curving up under hers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you're enjoying this mess of prompts so far; leave a comment or kudos if you liked this or want me to keep writing stuff like this!! <33


	14. corners, and how you get backed into them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> canon divergent/missing scene from 48 hours (season one). just kind of a mess. thanks cmllrbn for the prompt (defense)!!

When Jake wanders into the evidence locker looking for some, you know, evidence, because it’s not just an illicit place to make out (at least not till later), it’s a resource for their line of work, he finds Amy curled up catlike on a bed of old cold case files. For a moment, he considers just waking her up, but then she makes a quiet snuffling noise in her sleep and pulls a file closer to her. He finds himself smiling against his will at the gentle, relaxed expression on her face and her hair in disarray, darkness contrasting against old coroner reports spread over the floor. The dim light in the locker makes little parts of her skin glow gold, and there’s a funny feeling in his chest that he really, really does not want to think about. 

It’s when he’s about to grab his file and go that Amy lifts her head, eyes fluttering blearily. There’s a strand of hair in the way of her gaze, stuck to her lips, and Jake cannot tear his eyes away. 

The image is shattered when Santiago indignantly half-says and half-shrieks, “Were you _watching me sleep?”_

Jake yelps and leaps backward as she stumbles to her feet, tripping a bit over the files. “You were the one sleeping on the job! I was getting a file! For the case! You should be ashamed of yourself, Santiago,” and his voice goes growly and overly serious on that last bit, but instead of actually acknowledging it, Amy just crosses her arms and glares at him. He ruefully remembers the gentle look on her face from only seconds ago, and laughs wryly to himself. 

“You’re the one who got us into this mess in the first place, asshole. I’ve been here for a full thirty-six hours, and Scully and Hitchcock were hogging the entire breakdown.” 

“Santiago. First you’re sleeping on the job, and then swearing!” He grins at her wolfishly. “Unprofessional.” She stares him down until he holds up his hands defensively. “Sorry, sorry.” 

“You should be. I haven’t showered in way too long, and it’s all your fault.” 

Jake should probably have a comeback for that, but Amy is standing eye to eye with him, and yes she’s a little bit dirty from not showering in, quote, way too long, unquote, and yes she smells a little gross (see previous point), and yes she looks tired from lack of decent sleep, and yes she probably hates him at least a little bit, but the only thing he can think is _holy fuck, she’s_ beautiful. 

She stares him dead in the eyes, but then for a reason Jake still does not understand, her eyes flick down to his lips and the next thing either of them know they’re pressed against hers, solid and strong, and she makes this quiet little gasp that only makes him pull her closer as she presses him back against a shelf of evidence. Amy’s hands are surprisingly firm against his hips, and he can feel her nails biting through his jeans. His hands find their way into her ponytail and tug slightly, and he can feel her mouth opening into his–

She pulls away, eyes stern, lips parted slightly.

“This didn’t happen,” she tells him, quiet but ferocious in a way that hits him straight in the chest. “Understand _that,_ Peralta.” 

Amy shoves him back against the shelf for emphasis, as if daring him to say anything, and holds him there at arm’s length, eyes sharp and searching. 

He swallows, hard. “Got it.” 

Nothing changes after that. It’s easily rationalized: they had not slept in forever. Tensions were running high. Something had to give. 

This time, that something was Jake. 

Simple as that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading y'all, as usual please validate me lmao (kidding, kidding)


	15. photosynthesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is literally just. married fluff. enjoy

The apartment is warm– that’s the first thing Jake notices when he gets home after a double shift at the precinct. The thermostat is cranked up higher than any thermostat should ever go when it’s only October. He laughs ruefully to himself as he toes off his shoes and automatically hangs his leather jacket up on the peg that his wife (his _wife!_ Five months after getting married, and it still sends happy little shivers racing down his spine) had insisted on him using back when they were just dating. After a moment of deliberation, he takes off his flannel and hangs that up on the peg as well before taking off his tie and awkwardly tossing it onto the couch (he’s not infallible, okay?).

“Hey Ames!” he calls on habit into their tiny apartment (tiny, but so entirely _theirs:_ movie posters hanging crookedly next to beautiful art prints and framed photos of them and the squad, classic literature stacked on shelves next to comic books, a messy couch and a perfectly-made bed, takeout on a painstakingly cleaned dining table; it all goes hand in hand). For a moment, Jake wonders why he doesn’t get a reply, but then he looks at his watch and oh, yeah, it’s 12:17 at night, so Amy’s probably either doing the crossword, angrily calling the New York Times _about_ said crossword, or asleep.

He flicks off the lights as he wanders through the house and pauses for a moment in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter, watching the way the faint, far-off moon plays against the green-leafed plant that Amy had painstakingly placed in a pot, scooping dirt over its roots. It sits now in the windowsill. She’d gotten it when he moved in. Neither of them are really gardeners and have no desire to be, but Jake likes the way the veins stand out against the dark green of the leaf. Taking in all the sun it can, waving slightly in the breeze. It’s these tiny things he’s noticing lately: the rushing of cars outside their window, the static of the TV, the little giggle Rosa can’t stop herself from letting out when she gets genuinely flustered, the quiet way Charles perks up when Jake walks into a room, Gina’s soft sigh as she almost gracefully brushes a pen across paperwork she should have done weeks ago, Holt’s twitching and almost unnoticable smile, the pride in Terry’s eyes whenever one of them solves a case, the golden undertones in Amy’s dark brown eyes when the sun hits them right, the way she touches the stone of her wedding ring whenever she’s sad, the smile he’s just now realizing that she reserves only for him. It’s so many things, but mostly it feels like he’s finally breathing for the first time in his life, oxygen rushing through his veins and his lungs, waking him up. Jake has never felt so here before.

“Jake?” Her voice is soft behind him, from the hallway leading to their bedroom. He turns slowly, fingers brushing against the leaves of their houseplant as he goes, and he realizes that his lips are curled up just a little. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, meandering to his wife and pressing a gentle, languid kiss to her lips. “How’re you doing?”

She hums quietly, putting up a hand to frame his cheek. “Better now that you’re here.”

Jake’s grin widens, and he tips his forehead down to rest against hers. “That’s so cheesy,” he half-whispers and half-laughs. Amy is sleep-warm and drowsy, leaning slightly against him, and he can feel the slight chill of her ring against his orbital bone.

“What were you thinking about?” Amy breathes, idly stroking a thumb across his cheek.

He genuinely ponders the question for a moment, listening to the humming of electricity, the soft sounds of her breaths. “I don’t know,” Jake tells her quietly, and her eyes are almost serious when he meets her gaze. Dark and round and endless. He kisses her again, slow and easy, and loops his arms around her waist. “I just know I love you,” he mumbles against her lips. “So much.”

A smile pulls at the edges of her lips, and Jake can feel it forming against a smile of his own. “I love you too,” she tells him, reaching for one of his hands and squeezing it. They hold each other just like that, just breathing softly until their inhale and exhale sync up without them really noticing it, heads resting together, intertwined.

“We should probably sleep,” Jake reluctantly says after a while, and Amy murmurs an agreement, going up onto her tiptoes to give him one more kiss, this time in the nose. He laughs unashamedly and squeezes her hand, raising it to brush his lips across her knuckles. 

They fall asleep in each other’s arms that night, as always, and maybe they don’t fit together exactly perfectly, but when Amy falls asleep, Jake’s hand is tracing her finger and wrist bones, trying to commit it all to memory, and her head is just over his heartbeat, and her arm falls across his hip, and it might not be perfect, but it feels that way.

They breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all don't forget i'm on tumblr @fishycorvid and i post some stuff there that i don't post here!! anyhow please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoyed this :)


	16. day off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somebody stop me i'm writing too much fic this should be illegal (also this is just. sugary sweet married fluff.) enjoy anyway!!

For once, they wake up with the sun. 

Shafts of light stream in through curtains they were too lazy to close last night, and it hits Jake right through his closed eyes. He moans softly and rolls over, but only bumps into another warm mass. Normally, he might be annoyed at the sleeping impediment that is Amy Santiago, but today, he hums happily and pulls her closer, burying his nose in sweet-smelling dark hair and blindly reaching out to hold her hand. 

Amy turns her head and nuzzles into his neck, sighing softly. “G’mornin’,” she mumbles against his skin, and it’s enough to prompt him to open his eyes. She’s always so clumsy and slow-moving and soft in the morning, loose with her hands and her words and movements in a way that makes him feel warm down to the bones. 

“Morning,” Jake replies quietly, pressing a kiss into her hair. 

Sleepily, she rolls over in his arms and blinks up at him, a drowsy smile on her face. “When’s the alarm going off?” 

He laughs under his breath and drops a kiss onto her nose. “We’ve got the day off, ‘member, Ames?” 

She tilts her head at him, a confused expression on her face until he holds up his left hand and the realization spreads across her in the form of a grin that is bright enough to drown out even the blinding light coming in through the windows. 

“We’re married,” Amy whispers, utter awe and joy in her face, and Jake laughs again, this time loud and uninhibited. 

“We’re married!” This time, she laughs with him, joyous and incredulous, and she grasps his hand tight enough that he can feel her ring digging into his palm, but he can’t bring himself to care. 

When they finally quiet down, Jake carefully brushes the hair out of her face, a smile still lingering on both of their lips, before leaning in and kissing her, slow and languid. They stay like that for a while, trading kisses and soft words that end up only being muffled against each other’s lips. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Jake murmurs against her mouth, and he can feel her smile against his. 

Normally, neither of them are really morning people. 

But today is a new day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading guys c:


	17. repeated mechanical failure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back at it again

At this point, one might think they’d know better than to take Jake’s car anywhere. After all the times it broke down and they’d had to get it towed off (“It happened on the job,” he’d insisted. “They should have to pay for it! What’s the point of even having a job without bennies?” “Benefits,” Amy corrected idly, as if it made a difference, “and it’s on you for not doing basic maintenance. You haven’t had this thing’s oil changed since _2010,”_ and Jake huffed, obstinate), one might think they would just let them use the squad car, or even Amy’s car, a perfectly sensible 2006 Honda Civic. One might think at that point taking a bus would actually be significantly less stressful than driving the vehicular roulette wheel that was Jake’s car down to where they were supposed to be picking up a perp.

One might think all these things, but they would be wrong.

Because back in the precinct, Amy is clutching her keys in her hand as she and Jake walk to the elevator, and she says, “We are absolutely taking my car this time,” and he concedes cheerfully, but then he’s telling her about the weird old lady who lives next door to him, or something deeply strange and ominous and fantastic thing Gina said the other day, or Rosa’s mad dash to catch some shoplifter foolish enough to try and outrun her, y _ou should have seen it, Santiago, I swear she jumped eight feet straight up to scale that chain-link fence, she didn’t even touch it—_ and then he’s unlocking the passenger side door for her and she doesn’t even register his victorious grin until they’re practically out of the city. It was practically an art, and that she had to respect.

“Besides,” she says aloud in response to nothing in particular, “it’s not like I don’t keep snacks and an extra phone charger in my purse.”

“See? Nothing bad’s gonna happen.” He fiddles with the volume knob on the radio, and she smacks his hand away.

“Eyes on the road, Peralta,” Amy mutters, and he laughs, turning his gaze back to the highway ahead. She tries the knob herself: stuck, of course. Probably one too many food spills. The radio’s too quiet—distant, far off pop is never a great sound—and she switches to the classical radio that, in normal company, she wouldn’t admit to liking as much as she did. _Sure,_ she thinks, _Jake’ll mock me for it,_ but it’s different with him. She knows the pattern of the banter, can practically write the script for it in her head. She could predict the ebb and flow and his eventual acceptance of this odd new quirk of hers, his little half-smile that he tries unsuccessfully to hide.

But in the end, he doesn’t tease her about Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto 2, just laughs a little bit and accelerates as night falls over the emerging countryside, New York City falling away through the rearview mirror into memory.

It almost looks like this’ll be a normal trip—nothing like that last hellish weekend at the bed and breakfast with the maple syrup and Teddy and Sophia and the rooms filled with dolls and cantankerous old people—but then it starts to rain.

She tenses in her seat as soon as the first drop hits the windshield.

“Jake,” she says, a tone of warning in her voice.

A few more drops patter onto the windshield, and then a few more. “Mhm,” he says, and turns on the windshield wipers. _There are so many things that can go wrong when it rains,_ Amy thinks.

He flicks his eyes back over to her. “It’ll be fine,” he tells her, and as the rain begins to pour down for real, the windshield wipers go faster and faster, and she can hear the creak of protest from them just before one flies off into the night.

A moment of silence in the car broken only by the rain.

“We’re pulling over,” Amy directs. “I hate your car.”

Jake wrinkles his nose and presses on. “Mean, but fair.”

“We’re pulling over,” she repeats, and makes a grab for the wheel. _Not to actually take it,_ she reasons, _just to make a point._

He yelps and jerks the wheel to the side instinctively. “You’re gonna get us killed!” But his eyes are gleaming with entirely inappropriate mirth, and she sighs, long and loud.

“Just pull over, Jake,” she grumbles.

He laughs and turns on his blinker which, thankfully, seems to be the one part of his car that consistently works. “And you’re supposed to be the responsible one, Santiago,” he teases, quickly finding a shoulder to pull off onto by the grace of the Peralta Dumb Luck that seems to be the only thing keeping him alive at this point.

“Oh, shut up. If we’d kept driving, we would’ve crashed.” She gestures toward the window, whose other windshield wiper seems to have given up without its companion and is lying dead and still.

“Maybe I should do more routine maintenance on my car,” Jake comments nonchalantly, and she resists the urge to smack him.

“If I wasn’t an officer of the law, I’d have killed you by now,” she says instead, and he snorts.

“You would never, Ames.”

“I’d get away with it too,” she continues, unbuckling her seatbelt and crossing her legs, because might as well settle in, you know? “Detective and all that. I know how to hide a murder.”

“You know how _not_ to hide a murder,” Jake protests, but not with much conviction; his mouth is curling up at the promise of another dumb argument. “All your murder experience is murder you’ve _un_ hidden. If anything, you’d get caught even quicker.”

“That’s what you’d think, Peralta. But you have no idea. I’m _wily,”_ she says, tone completely dry, but she’s smiling too, now. “I could kill you any day.”

“I could kill _you_ any day,” he shoots back, petulant.

She snorts at that. “Could not.”

“Could too!”

“Could not!”

“Could too!”

“Could n—oh my God, this is ridiculous.”

He laughs, full-bodied and surprisingly sincere. “Is not.”

Amy puts her head in her hands, but she’s snickering through her fingers and based on the way Jake chuckles a little too, she’s sure he heard. “You’re the worst. I can’t believe we’re stuck in your car. Again. Did you do this on purpose?”

“No. Do you really have that little trust in me?” He pauses, as if hurt or maybe just considering something, and then smiles. “Hey, look on the bright side, Ames—at least this time we don’t have to pay for a tow truck! We just have to wait for the rain to stop!”  


She casts a pointed look out the window, where the rain is falling ever harder, rattling against the metal of the car roof. As if to make a point, thunder rumbles in the distance. She looks back at Jake, who shrugs, looking entirely too content with himself and the situation he’s landed them both in.

“Well, Jake, I’ll give you one thing—if this is some elaborate plan to get me out in the middle of nowhere so you can murder me, you planned it well.”

He gasps in mock hurt, eyes sparkling in the dim interior lights of the car. “I would never.”

“Sure,” she says, but can’t think of what to say next, so whatever retort she might’ve had drops off into silence. The rain is arrhythmic, and it’s everywhere, and he’s still looking at her in silence, expression turned from amused to merely contemplative, and she is uncomfortably reminded that he’s not as dumb as he plays himself off as; he’d beaten her fair and square in the bet all those months ago and he can tell what people were thinking by looking at them and he knows how to make anyone laugh. He’s not calculating the way she often is. He just seems to know.

He looks at her, with those discerning, warm brown eyes, and he knows.

“Listen,” she says quietly, but before she can say anything else, his hand has jerked awkwardly over the center console to land somewhere next to hers. The interior lights in his car buzz off—some kind of time thing, probably, Amy thinks somewhere in the back of her mind—but she doesn’t need to see his hand to feel his fingers, warm and dry, pressed next to hers. He’s not demanding anything. She wishes a little desperately that he would, because that’s what Jake _does_ , he shoulders his way into her space and grins his bright, wide grin and asks her about what she’s doing after work and tells her to come to the bar with the rest of the squad when she says she’s just gonna watch SNL reruns.

 _Except that’s not really a demand, is it?_ she thinks, and she’s aware, distantly, of moving her fingers up to rest on top of his, just light enough for her fingertips to touch his knuckles. Jake ever doesn’t _demand_ , not really. He just… is. He exists in her space without forcing his way through it and smiles more gently than she’d expected from this juvenile thirty-something guy and buys drinks for the whole team at Shaw’s and never asks any of them to pay him back and calls them taxis when he thinks they won’t remember.

She can’t tell in the dark, but she’s pretty sure he’s looking at her still.

“Did you do this on purpose?” she asks again, but even with the din of the storm outside, her voice feels too loud for this space they’re in, and there are so many things that can go wrong when it rains.

His voice is too close and too far away at once. “No,” and he sounds nervous and a little choked, but his hand flips over and before she can pull away he’s lightly caught her wrist and his fingers are clumsily tracing their way over veins, and it’s too much and not enough in a way Amy can’t quite put a name too. “But I’m not mad that it happened.”

“Why don’t you ever fix your car?” she asks, heart high in her throat. She doesn’t know what answer she’s expecting, but she has to ask, she thinks. _Is this why?_

From across the lightyears and millimeters between them, Jake laughs. “Because I’m in crippling debt,” he says, and kisses her, gentle and sweet and entirely caught between _too much_ and _not enough_ and she blindly pulls him closer to her until he gets held back by his seatbelt, and then he’s breaking away, laughing, and she’s following, laughing, and she kisses him again and again because she maybe thinks _too much_ could be okay, and because, maybe, now she can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! please drop a comment or kudos if you like :)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! drop me a comment or kudos! and don’t forget I’m always open for prompts :)


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